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Introduction

Effective marketing is essential for entering and engaging in a competitive market. This is true whether your aim is to stay in academia or move outside it. Marketing is all about convincing employers that you have the right skills, experience and motivation to fit their needs. To do this, you need to know what you have to offer, understand what the employer wants, and prepare effective marketing materials. Here's how:

Knowing you - Know your skills, strengths, values and motivations. See the Find out what you want section of the Careers Service website and carry out an analysis of your skills.

Knowing them - research your chosen occupation carefully. You can use the occupational research section of the Careers Service catalogue. Research your target employers, you can use the employer section of the catalogue. Access the resource catalogue. You should also make effective use of networking.

Identifying your research skills

As researchers you develop a very broad skill set, ranging from technical research skills to softer skills such as communication and people management. If you need convincing, map out everything you do as part of your research day-to-day, and then ask yourself 'What skills am I using and how?'

According to a survey, employers value the skills of researchers but do not feel that researchers always effectively articulate the skills they have. Clearly articulating your skills involves:

providing concrete examples that demonstrate you have the required skills.

not assuming that employers understand what is involved in a PhD / research project.

talking about your research skills in language that will resonate with your target employer.

Marketing your research skills

An important aspect of marketing for researchers is to think about how to present your research effectively to employers. How you talk about your research will depend on the type of role and employer you are targeting.

If you are applying for research jobs (and potentially other jobs closely related to your field), you will need to provide details of the content and achievements of your research as well as details of your technical research skills. For academic research jobs you should also include publications and awards and prizes.

For jobs outside of your field or where research is not the primary activity, emphasise the transferable skills gained from the research rather than the content. Use terminology that helps employers understand how your skills are relevant to them; for example, talking about presentation skills rather than lectures, people management rather than teaching, and mentioning publications as part of writing skills.

As far as possible, use phrases given in the job description; this will make it as easy as possible for recruiters to see you have the skills they are looking for.

Skills development

Assessing and developing your skills is an important part of both developing as a researcher and preparing for whatever will follow your PhD or research contract. Review your skills regularly and identify areas for development and action plans. All researchers should review their skills development with their supervisor/research manager on a yearly basis - see the Researcher Development Unit website for more information on this.

Transferable skills

Project management

Financial management

Understanding financial systems

Budgetary control

Managing people

Understanding the characteristics of an effective team

Interpersonal skills within teams

Leadership

Motivation

Team building

Skills in delegation and support

Planning

Planning the work and the allocation of work

Planning to avoid peak load problems for support staff

Proposal writing

Expertise in writing project proposals

Quality issues

Understanding of quality assurance processes

Conducting regular project reviews - including development of ideas

Skills in working to deadlines and producing a quality product

Understanding the project's purposes

Clarity on project context

Information/document management

Know-how management

Construction of databases

Document handling

Personal and interpersonal

Networking skills

Financial management

Time management

Assertiveness skills

Use of information technology

Word processing

Skills of workload management

Stress management skills

Managing your supervisor

Negotiation and persuasion

Communication skills

Managing people

Team working

Managing change

Handling the media

Corporate management/business skills

Entrepreneurship e.g. business start-up awareness

Technology transfer

Protection and exploitation of intellectual property rights (IPR)

Research skills

Context

Keeping abreast of current developments/future trends in the research domain

Maintenance of familiarity with literature and with current practice in the field

Awareness of research activities of other people in the centre

Awareness of the wider social and political context of the research

Strategic

Clarity of thought.

Ability to distil out the finding of crucial significance from volumes of research data.

Ability to operate across a range of different projects.

Ability to generate high profile, authoritative statements on key issues.

Developing the ability of staff to apply research methods/concepts to new domains.

Research concepts

Research strategies

Ethical issues

Scientific method - some philosophical considerations

Philosophies and issues within research

Hypothesis generating and testing

The political dimensions of research

Ethnographic research

Economic models of research

Methods

Bibliographic and reading skills

Quantitative and IT aspects in research

Understanding of how to exploit hierarchical databases and use CD-ROMS